There has been an issue for Avid HD Native users in that you needed to be on Mac OS 10.6.7 to update the firmware on the HD Native card but then to use it the compatibility specs quote that 10.6.8 is the minimum Mac OS to run HD Native systems on. That isn't too much of a problem if you are installing your system on a Mac with 10.6.7 but what if your system is already on 10.6.8 or even 10.7.x, what do you do?   Well Avid have realised this problem would be pretty common and so have come up with an application that will update the card's firmware what ever version of the Mac OS you have above 10 .6.7. Here are the details and the links...

This was a question that was asked on the daw-mac forum over the weekend and I chose to answer it.   I am also posting it here so more folk can access the info.   Lo/Ro (left only, right only) is a stereo down mix where the different channels are simply summed together. Lt/Rt (left total, right total) is a stereo down mix where the different channels are processed before summing them together. The is also called matrix encoding.   Both LtRt and LoRo provide stereo compatible downmixes of surround content. The LoRo doesn't have the phase shifted surround component to give the Pro Logic decoder something to do. Usually LoRo is set up so the Left & Right channels pass through unaffected the Centre channel gets mixed into both Lo & Ro at -3dB and Left Surround (Ls) is mixed into Lo at -3dB and Right Surround (Rs) at -3dB into Ro. Although these settings can be changed to suit the content to get the most compatible downmixes.   Both LtRt and LoRo are used in television so you must look at the delivery specs to see what the channel is asking for.

I posted my previous post on the Avid Audio Forum or DUC and it has created some interest so I replied with this post... If you just want a replacement for iDisk then there are a number of services out there like YouSendIt, Dreamhost, Jungledisk etc. But the great advantage that Gobbler brings is intelligent Pro Tools (and other DAWs) backup services as well as the promise of a range of other services including being able to send clients approval files and the possibility of using the same app to back up intelligently on to local drives too. Remember Mezzo? All this for the same money as Dreamhost. Remember June 27th is the last day to sign up for the beta and get 50GB of space.

I recently had an iLok problem when I upgraded my Waves Mercury & Studio Classics collection to v8. With all the new plug-ins they have released recently there are 121 licenses in the bundle and the maximum an original iLok can fit on is 118 so it was a new 2nd generation iLok for me. I must admit up to this point I hadn't seen the point of them, but now I was faced with a real benefit!

This came up on the Avid Audio Forum (formerly known as the Digidesign User Conference) and in the light of one of the solutions being Force Linking which I have covered here and is one of the most popular posts on this blog, I thought it would be good to add these Find & Replace ideas here too. 'quadraphonics' asked.... Is this possible - Find/Replace?  I frequently receive OMFs that have the same 'FX-Awesome-Impact.AIF' file for specific transitions (example). In the OMF these are all numbered FX-Awesome-Impact.AIF-##(where ##= a sequential number). My problem is that these tracks are distorted/clipped/not cross-faded, etc. So I took it upon myself to create one master impact sound that is improved. I would like to select all of the FX-Awesome-Impact.AIF regions and replace them AT ONE TIME with my newly created file. Using the Replace Region command only wants to replace on region at a time. For example I could replace FX-Awesome-Impact.AIF-01 with Improved_Impact.AIF, but it wouldn't replace FX-Awesome-Impact.AIF-02 through 50. I know that I could do it by hand, but if there was an automated way to do something like this it could be kind of cool. 'C' was the first to respond... Wouldn't recommend this as a general course of action but if you were to force relink the session to your new file via the project browser then restart the session it should take the new file as the source material for the regions. I think that I experimented with this process in the past and found it to work but it was good while ago and certainly not on PT8. For the 4 minutes it would take to try it out might be worth a shot. edit: note if it does work then I'd highly recommend then doing a Save Copy In to remove any reference to the old version from the session file. Oh and always work from a safety copy when performing these experiments. Ceri, very sound advice especially about working on copies of a session in case you mess up. 'quadraphonics' replied.... That is an interesting idea. The files I am dealing with are coming from OMF (From Final Cut). And while I convert all of the media upon opening it, the source file names do not remotely line up to the region names, even though the regions have .AIF in the name, there is no FX-Awesome-Impact.AIF in the audio files folder. To which 'C' replied.... open the project browser window and navigate to the Audio files 'folder',  select one of the regions on the timeline,  switch back to project browser and the selected file should be highlighted. then go to the toolbox icon, select relink selected and point to your new file. Hopefully should do what you want it to do. 'TVPostSound' asked... Doesn't the Sound Replacer option do that already???   'rafukyo' suggested.... you can use the "replace region" feature. From the manual: Replacing Audio Regions: Use the Replace Region function to replace multiple instances of an audio region in a playlist with another region. This is useful in post production if you use a sound effect, room noise, or atmosphere region many times in a session, and later decide to replace one or all of the original regions with a different region.  This is also useful in music production if you want to replace a certain loop or sample (for example, a drum beat) with a new one. You can use this compositionally, if you know the tempo of a section or session, to create a scratch piece with “rough” regions of the correct length, and later replace them with “final” regions of the same length. To replace regions by dragging and dropping: Select a region in a track’s playlist that you want to replace. The selection can extend beyond the region’s end point, to include material from the replacement region that is longer than the original region. Control-Shift-drag (Windows) or Command-Shift-drag (Mac) the replacement region from the Region List to the selected region. The Replace Region dialog opens. Configure the Replace Region dialog (see “Replace Region Dialog” on page 25). Click OK. Replace Region Dialog The following options are available in the Replace Region dialog: Replace Original Region: Only Replaces only the selected region with the replacement region dragged from the Region List. Replace All Instances of the Original Region: Replaces all instances of the selected region that fit the On criteria with the replacement region from the Region List. On This Track: replaces regions that fit the Match criteria and are on the same track as the original region. On All Tracks: replaces regions that fit the Match criteria for all tracks in the session. On Within the Selection: replaces regions that fit the Match criteria within the current selection.   'rafukyo', I not sure this will help as 'quadraphonics' problem is that each instance has a different number so Pro Tools will considere them not unique. However it may hang oon the Mach criteria,, if you can set it so that Pro Tools considers all the versions as matchable to the new region then it may be possible

Last year I posted several posts about video problems including two on a video compendium here and here based on an Avid Audio Forum (Digidesign Uer Conference) thread which you can find here. Sonny Keyes has just posted an update which I thought would be worth adding here too. Sonny said...   After reading all these posts and talking with some colleagues, I decided to get a Blackmagic Intensity Pro for my new Dual Quad-Core Power Mac. I was really looking forward to being able to use H264 video without having to convert to .dv first, but when I hooked it all up, it still wouldn't play back anything but .dv and DVCPRO50 files.  After some relatively unsatisfactory communication with Blackmagic and Avid, I finally tried using HDMI out instead of the Composite out (cables were installed a long time ago into conduits in the wall, so adding an HDMI cable is a major headache) and...presto! H264 plays back, as do other formats I couldn't get working before. It turns out that the Blackmagic card doesn't play other formats out the Composite out.  Just thought I would post a warning for potential users who only have a Composite in on their monitors.   "tom_lowe" also asked...   Does the downscale HD to SD option not work with H.264?     "reichman" responded....   Sonny: I think it's a little more complicated than that.  I used the BM IT Pro card with composite and then component out to an SD screen.  H.264 does work, but it depends on the resolution.  Occasionally, I have to convert HD H.264's to SD H.264 and it plays fine. Tom: I can't get the card to convert these files on the fly- not sure why. Anyway, I'm long overdue to replace the SD screen in my studio...   Hope that helps folks.

I came across this on The Digidesign Users Conference and thought it would be worth mentioning here. "pan4ama" asked.... Hi there, is there any shortcut to do this: 2 regions on the same track with a little empty space between them. With the first one selected, press *magic key stroke* to expand the first region's end to the start of the second! (Or second region selected, expand 2nd one's beginning to 1st one's end.) So you don't have to take the Trimmer Tool and drag it by hand. No time-stretch wanted.   "Mundoz" responded.... With the first region selected (highlighted), Shift & TAB - Extends the selection to the boundary of next region. (tab to transients off). Then Command & (+) fills the selection. If the second region is selected (highlighted),  Option & Shift & TAB: Extends the selection to the boundary of the previous region. Then Option & (-) fills the selection.   But do remember to select the region first or this trick doesn't work. Although there isn't a magic key stroke to do this in one go, for anyone with Quickeys it wouldn't take long to do a shortcut for this.  

Brent has just posted this excellent guide to the new routing features introduced by Avid in Pro Tools 9.... PT9 Mix window additions from Brent Heber on Vimeo. Thanks Brent for this. If a picture paints a 1000 words, how many words does a video paint.......

Russ has added two more Pro tools 9 videos. The first demonstrates the long overdue ADC feature in Pro Tools.. ADC in Pro Tools 9 from AIR Users Blog on Vimeo. The other is a video on how to set up an aggregate device on a Mac. This where you can have more than one interface that Pro Tools 9 can access... Pro Tools 9 - Setting Up An Aggregate Device On A Mac from AIR Users Blog on Vimeo. Finally they have created a hardware checker list which enables you to check whether the Pro Tools user community has experience of a particular interface working with Pro tools. This is an excellent crowd sourcing project as Russ explains... We've created a community list for Pro Tools users to check to see if their device works with Pro Tools 9. It is hoped that over time this will help users thinking about buying a device for Pro Tools 9 and to check for issues and bugs with a device. As this is a community list then it only shows devices added by members of the community. If you are a device owner then please add you device. If you are manufacturer then please feel free to add all devices you make which work with Pro Tools 9. Please use the 'search' options which are very powerful. If you have a device not shown that works then please add it to the list, if you have encountered any issues then please say what the issues are including system used; for example Mac OS X 10.6.2. If your unit works correctly then please say which version of the software it works on. If you think a listing is missing or incorrect then please add or edit to the listings. Please just give facts, not opinions.

Michael Maroussas has set up a Sound Collectors Club where if you share a sound effect on a theme you will get access to all that months sound effects. What an excellent use of crowd sourcing. I will let Michale explain.... Recent improvements in Soundcloud’s private sharing features have enabled me to put into action an idea that I’ve been wanting to set up for quite a while now but which I haven’t felt able to in quite the simple and fuss-free way I envisaged. The Sound Collectors’ Club is basically a private account I’ve set up on Soundcloud.  The idea is that people can upload their recordings on a given monthly theme to this account via the dropbox above.  Once the recording or recordings have been transferred into that month’s private ‘set’ (by me) I will then e-mail you a private link which will give you direct access to all the tracks which that set contains and which you are free to download and use within commercial projects without any restriction (other than you obviously mustn’t go and sell them on as sound effects – individually or as libraries).  Hence, from contributing just one recording you could end up with a small arsenal of sounds to add to your library.  However, a contribution is necessary in order to even be able to audition any recordings within the private set. Part of the big appeal for me of using Soundcloud for this venture is that some of it’s ‘Stat’ features come in really handy.  Once you’ve gained access to a set you can comment on each other’s recordings and ‘favourite’ a sound – all of which I’m hoping will soon be able to be automatically documented on Twitter for people to follow (and, hence, within the ‘Activity’ feed above).  The creator of the track that gets the most downloads (decided by the number of ‘favourites’ that a recording gets if download numbers are tied) gets to choose the theme or topic for the following month.  In this way, participants get a chance to supplement their libraries in the way that best suits them rather than me dictating the subject matter every month. As is probably evident from this idea, I’ve been very inspired by the flurry of activity that has occurred over the past year or so within this global sound community that is currently thriving online.  The Sound Collectors’ Club borrows ideas from several of the products of this community that have come before it but tailors them into a package which best suits me and my interests. In a nutshell, the club is basically inspired by 4 things: I love the (potentially) phenomenal productivity of crowdsourcing (nod to Tim) I love the idea of field recording workshops but I’m always a bit frustrated that the pooled results are just for listening purposes and cannot be used on commercial projects. I like the concept of Shaun Farley’s Sound Design Challenge but I want to participate in a field recording version of this. Soundsnap.  I’ve begun to dip into this from time to time over the past year or so and have grown to quite like using it for grabbing a couple of fresh sounds here and there.  In this way, I don’t envisage the club providing definitive collections such as Tim’s Hiss and a Roar ventures; rather an occasional supplementary boost to the palette of fresh sounds at your disposal. My current priority is just to get this idea out there and see if anyone’s interested in joining in.  However, if people are interested, I do have a lot of ideas that I would like to try out in this format.  One such idea is to do a larger worldwide version of Noise Jockey and fieldsepulchra‘s Project MoMa collaboration that they did back in May and then pool the results. Also, I’d like to try and make this not just a virtual club but also organize field recording meet-ups with other local sound enthusiasts and then once again use the club account to bring all our efforts together. The whole basis and appeal for me of this idea is it’s simplicity but please do bear with me if there are any rough edges that crop up over the coming weeks that I may have overlooked.  I’m no web wizard:  I have no idea how to set up a website (hence I’ve stuck with wordpress.com) and have no real intention of learning as I prefer to focus all my attention on my primary ambition which is to keep getting better and better at sound editing.  This is still a work in progress:  I’ve made a point of avoiding the inaction that overdeliberation can produce but as a result I will need to continue fine tuning things over the coming weeks.  Having said all that, in theory the club should need very little supervision other than accepting submissions so I’m hoping this is a very straightforward yet fruitful venture! Feel free to offer up any comments or suggestions within this blog or through Twitter.  With a bit of luck, there’s a few of you folks out there that are keen on this idea too and we can start getting a few sounds together! Look forward to hearing from you - Best, Michael Maroussas I have joined and uploaded two rain related sound effects from my own collection.

Waves have finally done a profile on a non music artist for their web site and it is an interview with John Purcell is author of Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art. In this interview with Waves, John was kind enough to shed some light on this somewhat mysterious corner of the audio universe. What's the main goal of a dialogue editor? A dialogue editor is responsible for every sound that was recorded during the shoot. He takes the more or less finished film from the picture editor, makes sense of the edited sounds, organizes them, and finds out what works and what doesn't. The dialogue editor wades through the outtakes to find better articulations, quieter passages, sexier breaths, and less vulgar lip smacks. He replaces washy wide-shot sound with clean close-up takes, establishes depth in otherwise flat scenes, and edits tracks for maximum punch and clarity. Dialogue editors also work to remove the filmmaking from the film. Dolly squeaks, camera noise, crew rustling, and light buzzes must go; otherwise, the magic of the movies is compromised. These editors help present the actors in their best light, quieting dentures, eliminating belly noises, and sobering slurred syllables. And when the production sound can't be saved, the dialogue editor is involved in the ADR process, that is, the re-recording of voices in the studio, to replace problem field recordings or to beef up performances. Dialogue editing is all of these things and more. Dialogue is what makes most films work. The dialogue editor makes the dialogue work.  More.....

This was a question asked by 'AMIEL' on the Digidesgn User Conference. He asked.... Lets say in Track #1 I have different regions of Hits and I select all of them and in once I want to be able to use the trimming tool and make them all a bit longer....how do i do it?  Again I am talking regions in the same track...not in different tracks... BaileyBass suggested the solution.... Actually there is a very good way to do it... Engage your "object grabber".(not your "regular" grabber) Hold down Shift and select all the regions you want. (they will have a yellow border around each of them) Hold down command and use the + and - keys (on the numeric keyboard) and you can easily trim and extend them (the ends of the region). NOTE that the increment is based on your nudge value. Hold down OPTION and you can do the same to the beginnings of the selected regions. This is a REAL timesaver in a lot of situations.

Tim Prebble on his blog  has posted a series about metadata. A while back he asked various software developers how their products supported metadata and he has just published the answers as well as showing some experiments with Sound Devices free application Wave Agent.

Following on from my experiences with finding a plug-in that helped to remove reverb from recorded material posted here. The thread was picked up on the Pro Tools User Group in Linked In. For those who are Linked in members you can view the thread here. For those you aren't here are some of the comments. 'Andy remembered seeing a De-reverb plug-in at NAB near the Neyrinck stand. 'Carl posted... I remember seeing that plugin at Nab or IBC. The guys were Japanese and were only sharing a stand with Paul I think! Which of course takes us full circle as it was the NML RevCon–RR plug-in from tacsystem.com which I referred to in my post as being the expensive option. 'Beto M' posted... I've tried SPL last night and it's working fine to me.  I'm still running on demo mode but i'm thinking to buy it.  But the japanese....i don't know....there weren't much informations about the plugin and about them.... and later posted having tried the demo.... yes it really works fine Jeff H posted... I've used the SPL plugin. Doesn't work perfectly on everything but you can't beat it for the price. and then 'Ryan H' posted this advice for achieving similar results using different techniques... The new Waves WNS Noise Suppressor (which is a lot like the Cedar DNS) is great for getting rid of some reverb as is the Cedar. put all the frequency faders down all the way. then lift up the threshold til it sounds good. turn up the smoothing a bit as well. Another way but tedious is drawing the volume automation down in the spaces between words and syllables.

Following on from my EQ matching experience here and here when I heard about a plug-in that might help just at the right time, I had a similar experience with some interview clips that had been recorded in a reverbant space.  Again I turned to the Digidesign User Conference for advice and found a relevant thread running on the Digidesign User Conference The Solution There were two main suggestions on this thread, one expensive and one cheap. The expensive one is the NML RevCon–RR plug-in from tacsystem.com  It is listed in their store at 123,900 Yen, which comes out at around £900, so I moved on to the other suggestion. This was a plug-in not unsurprisingly called DVerb from SPL and is part of their MicroPlugs range (see fig 11). What’s more this plug-in won’t break the bank and there even a trial version anyway so you don’t have to risk anything! Once downloaded there isn’t much to explain as to how to use it. There are only two controls, one controls the amount of reverb reduction and then other is to adjust the gain to compensate for any level changes. Does this one work? The answer is again yes it does, I was able to get about 12 to 14 dB of reduction before it sounded odd. It came across as a multi-band expander and just as you can overdo it, when you use an expander, so you can overdo this little plug-in, but again as time is money. Conclusion This plug-in got me out of another little corner quickly and effectively and so I had another happy customer. I shelled out 59 Euros and bought the plug-in before the trial ran out so I can make more happy customers. Yes I could have used an expander, possibly the Waves C4 or the WaveArts multi-band dynamics plug-in and got a good result after some time messing about but as with the Repli-Q plug-in to have a simple plug-in that does the job quickly and well is invaluable.

In part 1 I explained the challenge and a potential solution. In this part lets see if the solution delivers... Once fully installed, I inserted an instance of Repli-Q in the session to see how well it would work in this situation. This is how I had laid out the session. I put the reference take on one track and then the muffled take on another track. This is so I could adjust the EQ on the muffled track but still hear the reference file untreated. When making comparisons like this, don’t listen to short snatches of the reference, followed by the region you are treating, as you can easily get fooled into thinking things are better when they are not. I always listen to the full reference region and then a good chunk of the region to be treated to make sure I was going in the right direction, yes it took longer but was well worth it in the end. So with Repli-Q in the session, I bypassed the EQ plug-in on the ‘muffled’ track and moved the reference region down onto the muffled track so I could switch from one to the other with Bias’s plug-in. Learn once Next I opened up the Repli-Q plug-in, selected the reference region, hit Play and then Learn Spectrum in the Repli-Q window, and let it play for as long as possible through the reference region. Bias recommend that you should always start playing before you hit the Learn button so that Repli-Q doesn’t try to learn digital silence and the same at the end, so I clicked the Learn Spectrum again before hitting the Stop button in Pro Tools. Now I had a green trace on the graph that represented the ‘reference’ files signature. When I saved the profile by hitting the Save Spectrum button the trace turned to yellow. Learn Twice Now I highlighted the muffled region, hit Play again, hit Learn Spectrum and let Repli-Q learn the signature for the region I needed to treat. Whilst it was learning I got a green trace together with the yellow trace presenting the reference file. Again hitting the Learn button stopped the learning process, and I remembered to leave it run a long time to get a good average for the ‘muffled’ region’s profile. Having clicked the Learn Spectrum again the plug-in displayed then three traces. The yellow trace represented the profile for the reference region, and then two traces for the ‘muffled region, a green trace for the input profile and a blue trace for the output profile. Now I could adjust the amount of EQ added to the muffled region with the Matching slider. I found that as I slid the Matching slider from its default 50% down to 0%, the plug-in had no effect on the treated audio, through to 100% where the output profile was identical to the input profile and so the maximum EQ change was applied to the muffled region. Graph to EQ I found it much easier at this point to see this in action by changing the display from Graph to EQ. I could then see the EQ that Repli-Q was applying to the muffled region to get it to match the reference region. Does it work I hear you ask? Well yes it does, it produced a much more natural treated region than I had achieved with an EQ plug-in alone. But having listened to the treated version carefully I noticed that there was an increase in low frequency background noise and it was still not quite bright enough for my taste. However with Repli-Q’s EQ curve pointing me in the right direction, and with the help of an EQ plug-in, in my case an instance of Waves Renaissance EQ 4, I applied a low frequency shelving to compensate for the increase in low frequencies shown above and also a fairly tight parametric boost centred around 7k to add to what Repli-Q was already doing. With the two together I had a very close match and all done in about 10 minutes. All I needed to do was to render the treated files so they were the same length as the originals to make it as easy as possible for the video editor to replace the muffled regions with the treated ones. To do this, I copied the settings across from the real time plug-in to the corresponding AudioSuite version so I could process the files and then disable the real time plug-in to save computer processing power. Finally I send the processed file back to the client using the Sharing function on my Mobile Me iDisk. Conclusion The Repli-Q did a much better job, than I did, especially once I had helped Repli-Q along the way with a bit of extra targeted EQ and at around $149 for the single plug-in was well worth the money. Yes I could have persevered with EQ and matched it better but to have a simple to use tool that produced a very good result quickly is well worth it, after all time is money!

The problem A client had recorded a video voiceover but for some unexplainable reason several of the takes were ‘muffled’. They sent an example and a reference file over via ftp and I had a listen and sure enough it was muffled but it didn’t sound like just an EQ problem but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, I thought that the muffled takes may have been recorded as an mp3 but apparently not, it was one complete session. I was able to match them with EQ reasonably but I thought it would be worth doing a search on the Digidesign User Conference and found a very interesting current thread. It was all about this very subject. Don’t you just love when that happens? The Solution The first suggestion was to use Dynamic Spectrum Manager from Pro Audio DSP with the advice to use sparingly and then a number of posts outlining how hard it was to get DSM to function as an EQ Matching application as it is described by Pro Audio DSP as a “groundbreaking adaptive techniques to capture both the frequency-domain and dynamic characteristics of audio program, and uses this as the basis for a highly developed large scale multi-band compression process.” To this end the advice is it can do great things but needs careful use and as so often in my workflow, time is tight, so I moved onto the next suggestion. Bias Repli-Q from their Master Perfection Suite. As it happened, I already had Master Perfection Suite on my computer, which was even better news! However if you aren’t as fortunate, you can download a free 14 day trail from Bias, all be it the complete Master Perfection Suite which also includes 5 other applications and comes in VST, AU and RTAS plug-ins. In part 2 I will show you how I used it and whether it delivered the goods or not.

'CEM3387' asked recently on the Digidesign User Conference about a problem with BlackMagic Intesity and ProTools 8.0.1 LE..... Whatever codec and resolution, data rate I have tried on the B.M. Intencity card it looks totally terrible when I play the video files back in ProTools thourgh the B.M HDMI out, the files are so pixelated and harsh. If I play the same files in their own Media Express software it looks decent not good. Better resolution but still harsh. What kind of codecs do you guys run? Is there any adjustments I can do apart from the ProTools menu for quick time which does not affect the quality at all at this stage. It looks like a very low rate QT file for a Cellphone played at 1920 x1080. MacPro 8core 3.0GHz, 6GB RAM, 10.5.8 ProTools LE 8.0.1 QT 7.6.6 Black Magic 3.6.1 'JeromeOD' replied... I use prores with the same kit and software as you and all is great. I'm not certain about the quicktime version though, is that definitely what it should be? Gary Nattrass added... I am running virtually the same system but with QT V10. Like Jerome Pro res full HD files are no problem. Have a look at the BM card settings in system preferences there may be something adrift there. CEM3387 responded... Thanks for the replies. First of all it the harshness was a "AV MODE" setting on the display I am running. As soon I found that bastard and disable it, it looks more natural. "I am running virtually the same system but with QT V10" Do you run OS 10.6.x or 10.5.8? "Like Jerome Pro res full HD files are no problem." OK I´ll see if they can prep that for me. What version HQ, regular or LT? "Have a look at the BM card settings in system preferences there may be something adrift there." I un-checked the "Remove field jitter when video is paused" that was recomended somewhere else. Other that that I do not know what could affect output. Output is set to HDMI NTSC/PAL and output processing it Off. Also I cannot get the display the whole picture frame regardless of setting on the monitor setting. The monitor is native 1920x1080 and I have tried with movies at native 1920x1080 and still the picture is a bit cropped. 'Newpostguy' suggested... Open quicktime pro and convert it. You dont wait for picture department that way and dont look like "oops I forgot I can only run this type of codec" guy. Convert to apple pro res 442 (mpeg streamclip or QTsync will do this for free almost as good) Make sure the video is 720p or 1080i if HD (BMI does not do 1080p) It would be wise to learn about various codecs and why they are used at different times. CEM3387 replied... "Newpostguy" THANKS! Im am now tempted to change the the subject of this post to "NO Problem with BlackMagic Intesity and ProTools 8.0.1 LE" Mpeg Streamclip For the win! It can batch convert too! "Make sure the video is 720p or 1080i if HD" (BMI does not do 1080p) Ahhh, did not know that I love progressive so 720p it is then. Thanks a lot for solving my problems!

Folk have been having some problems when buying Mac friendly pre-formatted drives like a Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac as it comes pre-formatted with GUID partition map. I you have an Intel Mac then that will NOT cause you a problem. However if you have a PPC or you are going to end up at a facility that still has Power PC Macs you will need to reformat it to the Apple Partition Map before it will play with Pro Tools nicely. This little problem slipped in with the introduction of Intel Macs and Mac OS 10.4.6 when GUID Partition Table support was introduced. The default mode when formatting drives now on Intel Macs is GUID Partition Table. If you put this drive onto a Power PC Mac like a G4 or G5 then you are likely to get 9131 errors in Pro Tools.  You can check if your drive is partitioned with a GUID Partition Table using Disk Utility. If you select the higher level icon in the drive list in Disk Utility, in the bottom section it will show what partition map has been used. Any drive formatted on an Intel Mac will use a GUID Partition Table. You will need to use the Options menu in the Partition tab to force Disk Utility to select Apple Partition Map. Alternatively just format the drive on a Power PC Mac and it will be formatted with an Apple Partition Map. If you have an incorrectly formatted drive you will need to move all the material off it to reformat it with the correct partition map. So if you do buy a pre-formatted Mac friendly drive then check it with Disk Utility first and pre-format it BEFORE you put anything on it. It is in the Pro Tools documentation but it has caught me out!

'jahtao' asked this interesting question on the Digidesign User Conference recently.... Default Mixer setup for 5.1, LtRt and stems? Any tips on how to configure the mixer and IO to have simultaneously: 5.1 full mix and M&E Stereo full mix and M&E (made using Neyrinck's LtRt folddown plugin) Stereo stems (music and fx stems would have to be via LtRt) At the moment I'm having to concentrate on getting the 5.1 mix together for the client and worrying about the deliverables later. But I aspire to having everything setup properly and streamlined. I've all HD3 with 2 x 192 etc. 'infiniteloop' replied... well, assuming you've properly grouped all your stem elements correctly, i'd just put a unity gain send on each of Sync, Fx, Mus, M&E and Final busses and send them to new 5.1 busses (I call them SyncMixdown, FXMixdown etc.) Bring them up on aux faders and drop a Neyrinck on each., then set the output to a matching set of stereo busses. Bring these up on audio tracks and you have yourself a stem recorder. Well it is increasing looking like Paul Neyrinck's fold down plug-in is the answer to all our prayers to save having to do two different mixes.